


Interlude: Overprotection

by angel_deux



Series: Won't You Let Us Wander [3]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Bodhi has a lot of feelings, Direct sequel to The First Mission, F/M, FIx It, So does Cassian, it continues to be a disaster, the continued misadventures of Rogue One
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-23
Updated: 2017-01-23
Packaged: 2018-09-19 13:36:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9443132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angel_deux/pseuds/angel_deux
Summary: After their first mission together, Bodhi is the first to notice that Cassian is pulling away from Jyn.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This little one-shot takes place just after The First Mission: Already a Disaster (I feel like I definitely could have named that something less goofy but ok). So far I've got an "interlude" between all but 2 of the missions (missions 2 and 3 currently blend together, but I might change that). I plan to generally use them to bridge the gap between missions and to be more introspective emotional development-type glimpses into the characters. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy!

Bodhi hasn’t had many friends in his life, but he understands people. He understands their interactions, even if he doesn’t share many of them. Being a cargo pilot was like that. You observed people in their lives and you were never quite a part of it. You were just the anonymous face who flew their stuff from one place to another. Now he _is_ a part of it, is surrounded by friends, and his powers of observation have become more than just a survival skill, but they’re making him more afraid than ever.

He’s never had real friends before, but now he does. And he doesn’t want to lose them over something as foolish as this. Jyn is oblivious, still smiling over her miracle with K-2SO and over the mission reports from Kopha that came in yesterday, reporting a successful block of the counterattack. She breezes around the base, accepting congratulations in that stilted, awkwardly friendly way she’s recently adopted, and she doesn’t seem to notice that Cassian’s almost immediate vanishing act is related to her in any way.

Of course, Bodhi isn’t sure he can blame her for that. It _is_ a singularly stupid reaction for the captain to have.

* * *

It’s small things at first. Like when they first land on Yavin and Cassian leaves to go debrief Draven and Mon Mothma, and he doesn’t ask any of them to come with him, even though it’s obvious Jyn was expecting to go. It would only make sense, after all: she was the one who was separated. She was the one who heard the Stormtroopers discussing their plans. But it’s not until later that she’s called to the mission room, irritated and grumbling about a waste of her time, and by that point Bodhi already spots Cassian slinking back to his quarters with K-2SO.

And it’s obvious. It’s obvious, but Jyn doesn’t notice, and it causes this high-pitched anxiety in Bodhi’s ears, like a whine of anticipation, because he hates knowing something like this when the people who _should_ know it don’t.

Chirrut just claps him on the shoulder and says, “they’ll figure it out,” but that’s not good enough. It’s _not_. Bodhi can’t go back.

* * *

Cassian stops taking his meals with them, too. Jyn wonders one morning at breakfast where he is.

“Should someone check on him?” she asks, taking a sip of her caf. But she shrugs before Bodhi has to answer, says, “I’m sure he’s just busy.”

“Right, of course,” Baze says, and Baze sounds as annoyed as Bodhi is (except not as afraid, because Baze is afraid of maybe two things and not having friends is probably not one of them).

“Busy,” Bodhi repeats, and just the single word sounds like a lie, but Jyn just goes back to her datapad and her caf, kicking her legs up onto the empty chair that should be full of Cassian beside her, and Bodhi feels the tension settling deep in his shoulders.

* * *

It’s not that Cassian avoids Jyn completely. No, he’s a spy, and a good liar, so he makes it a _point_ to talk to her. Friendly. Distant. It’s the same way he’s always talked to Bodhi and the others. The warmth is there, but so is the wariness to let them close. That’s not new. But now he talks to Jyn the same way. No more of that obnoxious need to stand right in her face to deliver routine maintenance reports. No more staring into each others’ eyes as they discuss how terrible the caf is. He gives her polite smiles as he passes her in the hall.

“Just a short leave until we can be sure about our next mission,” he says to all of them, and his eyes don’t purposefully skip over Jyn’s, but they don’t linger the way they used to either, and one of these days Jyn is going to stop believing herself when she says he’s just got a lot on his plate.

“What kind of mission?” Bodhi asks, strangely desperate to be away from here.

“They’ve been talking about sending us to meet with a contact of Solo’s. Just a quick introduction. Pass on a message.”

“That’s not even a mission,” Jyn points out, and Cassian gives a perfunctory shrug, looking at her just long enough for it to be polite.

“Until we have a new base to operate out of, there probably won’t be a real mission for a while. That’s just how it is.”

Pausing to make sure no one else has any questions, he turns on his heel and leaves. Jyn waves him off, grimacing.

“What is the matter with him lately?” she asks. Bodhi sits there for a long time in anticipation of her eyes flicking up from the weapon she’s cleaning to meet his, calling on him to answer. But she doesn’t, the question was rhetorical, and he makes his escape after a few mumbled excuses about seeing to the ship that she doesn’t even seem to hear.

* * *

Bodhi’s not sure _how_ Jyn doesn’t notice the time Cassian literally turns and walks out of the hanger when he sees that Jyn and Bodhi are sitting on the floor just inside Rogue One, playing a card game, but she _doesn’t_. Bodhi does, and this time he actually meets Cassian’s eyes and sees the shame that fills them before the captain leaves.

* * *

And it all makes Bodhi so afraid, because this is too fragile and easy to break, and he doesn’t want to go back to having no friends again. He’s not sure he could take it.

That’s why he goes to find Cassian.

Normally, Cassian scares him. Not a lot, not like how Draven scares him, but in a way that feels like intimidation, like standing in front of someone you admire and thinking that you’re going to make a fool out of yourself. But Bodhi goes to find him anyway, swallowing heavily, his throat dry, his mouth already twisting into a terrified sort of half-smile that wouldn’t even fool K-2SO, probably.

Cassian and his droid are checking through the inventory of one of the transport shuttles, preparing another evacuation flight to wherever the Rebellion’s non-essential personnel are being shipped off to until they can build their new base. Cassian looks irritated, which is probably because K-2SO is loudly complaining as Bodhi walks up.

“We never had to do things like this _before_ ,” the droid says. “Why you would volunteer for such petty work now is beyond my comprehension. Were your decision making skills damaged on Scarif along with your leg?”

“My leg is fine,” Cassian mutters.

“You favor it.”

“I don’t favor it.”

“Right, of course. _I_ must be wrong. Me. The droid programmed to observe you. My mistake.”

Bodhi figures this is as good moment as any to say something.

“Guess Jyn was right about you wanting to chuck him out the airlock, huh?” he asks. K-2SO looks at him with what is probably supposed to be betrayal. Now that Bodhi thinks of it, the droid’s quiet muttering about Jyn’s ungrateful attitude was probably supposed to be a secret. He needs to be better about that. K-2SO might be kind of mean, but he _likes_ Bodhi for some reason, and Bodhi should know better than to throw away even the most terrifyingly tall and scary of friends.

“What do you want, Bodhi?” Cassian asks, looking up from his datapad. His eyes are crinkled at the corners, making him look older than he is, in a world-weary way that makes Bodhi sad. Sometimes Bodhi forgets that Cassian is only a _year_ older than him. It caused him almost a total breakdown the other day when he realized that Jyn was a few years _younger_ , but Cassian seems like he’s been around so much longer than the rest of them. It’s all the stress he carries. He wears it like a second skin. And the sadness, too, probably. But Bodhi hasn’t met a single Rebel fighter yet who isn’t a little sad.

“Can we talk about something? Um. Alone?”

Cassian looks surprised by the request, like he can’t possibly figure out what they need to talk about. Which tells Bodhi that Cassian thinks he’s being a lot more subtle than he really is.

“Whatever you need to say, you can say in front of me,” K-2SO says.

“I actually am pretty sure you’ll punch me if I say it in front of you? So if we could just…?”

Cassian sighs and puts his datapad down with almost _too_ gentle a gesture, like he wants to let out an explosive sigh and toss it in the pile with the rest of the stuff, and he’s only not doing it because it would be _unseemly_.

Bodhi would run away right now, but this is important. This is for Jyn. This is for all of them. He’s not looking to watch his team get dissolved and then having to join some _other_ team, fly for some _other_ crew, where they’ll whisper _Imperial_ and _traitor_ like curse-words, the way the soldiers in the galley sometimes do when they think he’s too in his head to listen. Or maybe they just don’t care. Maybe they want him to hear. Either way, he can’t fly them. He can’t laugh with them in the main hold of some other ship. He can’t.

Cassian lets him into the empty shuttle that he and K-2SO are packing, and he turns to Bodhi with an air of patient resignation. And the thing is that Bodhi really _does_ mean to be tactful about it. But somehow the first words out of his mouth are, “you’re behaving like a child, and you need to stop.”

Cassian’s eyebrows climb so high on his head it’s almost funny, except Bodhi is still scared.

“What are you talking about?” Cassian asks. But he sounds annoyed enough that Bodhi is pretty sure he knows exactly what Bodhi’s about to say.

“This thing with Jyn. You’re worried about her, yeah? And I gather that’s as new a thing for you as it is for her. As it was for me, before Galen helped me figure it out. Bravery and all that, right? It’s not just pointing a gun in someone’s face or charging into battle when you know you’re probably going to lose. That’s your easy stuff.”

“Slow down,” Cassian says, a trifle warning, and Bodhi knows that _slow down_ really means _stop_ , but he doesn’t.

“You just have to be brave about something you haven’t had to be brave about before. That’s all it is. You’re not helping anyone by trying to fool yourself into thinking you don’t care about her. She hasn’t noticed yet, but if she does? If she does, it’s going to ruin this whole thing. I’ve never had friends before. Not like this. We did good on Kopha. If you think Jyn was reckless, tell her that. You keep acting like you don’t want her around, and she’ll go. You _know_ that. We’re the only things even keeping her here in the first place!”

“Maybe it’s best for everyone if she does,” Cassian says. Bodhi scoffs openly before he remembers that this is his captain, and he should maybe try to be at least a _little_ respectful.

“You can be worried about her and still let her do the job. You just gotta get used to it. Running away from it is the wrong thing to do. I don’t care what you have to say to her. Just say it. Don’t screw this up for the rest of us because you’re scared.”

Which is, officially, the limits of his own courage, and so he scatters. That was more than enough. Now it’s in Cassian’s hands.

* * *

Which is to say that Cassian spends the next few days looking at Jyn with a cagey nervousness that Bodhi relates to, and it’s obvious he’s trying to figure out what he wants to do, and Bodhi is half convinced they’re all going to die before Cassian figures it out.

* * *

And Bodhi will probably never give Cassian a clear answer on _how_ Jyn figured out what was going on, but Cassian has his theories.

He spots her coming across the hanger, mouth twisted into a sneer, one hand on her hip as she stalks towards him, and he’s trying to wrack his brain for a good exit line, something he can say that will get across that it’s critically important, that he has to go, that he just can’t talk right now. But he waits too long, and she says, “we need to talk.”

“I…okay,” he says.

She drags him to the war room, smaller than the command center though still larger than he’d like. The seats are ranged around them. And they make him nervous, even though they’re empty, even though she closes the door tight behind them and even gives him a few moments to say something first.

Then she says, “you’re acting strange, and I know why.”

Not expecting her to come out and say that, Cassian finds himself at a loss for words.

“I’m,” he says, but he doesn’t get any further. She gives him another few seconds, and it’s humiliating, because he knows he isn’t going to use them.

“This team is all I have,” Jyn says bluntly. He feels ‘ _you are all I have_ ’ in his bones. “I’m sorry I landed in trouble. But if you think I’m _ever_ going to leave you behind without trying everything to save you first, you don’t know me as well as I thought you did.”

“Oh,” he says, which is somehow worse than ‘I’m’.

“If you aren’t with me, if you’re off on some other team or working alone or if you’re trying to pretend like you don’t care, I’ll still be in trouble. Cassian, I was in Imperial _prison_ when the Rebellion found me. I’m never going to _not_ be getting into scrapes. Wouldn’t you rather…” but now it’s her turn to flush, go quiet, look embarrassed.

_Wouldn’t you rather be together?_

“Yes,” he answers. The unspoken words bring a small smile to his lips, but he won’t push it. He knows this was hard enough for her to say. “I’m just not used to it. Being responsible for…friends.”

“Not used to having friends to be responsible for,” Jyn says, which might have sounded mocking, were it from anyone else. But he doesn’t read it as mocking from her. He reads it as relating, understanding.

“No time for all that,” he says.

“There’s time now,” she points out. “We have time.”

“If you don’t get yourself killed.”

“Well, there’s that.”

“Scarif and Kopha. You nearly died both times. It’s not a good precedent.”

“Don’t talk to me about almost dying,” Jyn points out, her voice soft enough that he feels pulled to it, like he always does.

“Someone should.”

“You fell _how_ far?” she asks pointedly.

“That’s different.”

“Cassian, it isn’t,” she says, laughing a little, and it’s one of the most beautiful sounds he has ever heard.

“I was protecting you for the good of the Rebellion. You came after me for the good of me. It is completely different.”

She laughs again, steps closer. Looks up at him in a way that makes him want to swallow heavily, gulp air, makes his heart thud against the inside of his ribcage. Every time she comes this close, she comes a little closer. It’s never quite close enough, but it has the promise of ‘one day’. And Cassian hates it, knows that he should be able to shrug her off and tell her to find another team or leave and stop making things more confusing for him, but he can’t do that. He doesn’t even want to.

Selfish. It’s selfish. But when she looks at him with understanding that way, when she looks at him like she _knows_ him, he remembers how lonely every day before her was. And he thinks about how tense she was when she first met him. How lonely _she_ was. He thinks about her saying that people don’t stick around for her. He thinks about how it felt to hear that, knowing that she was telling him that he was the exception.

Maybe it’s possible for a thing to be selfish and selfless at the same time. Maybe it’s possible for his fear for her to coexist with the respect he has for the fact that she can take care of herself.

Maybe Bodhi’s right. Maybe he _does_ have control issues.

“This isn’t easy for me,” he says, an explanation without actually offering one.

“Maybe I won’t save you next time, just to make you feel better.”

He laughs, looks away from her, and when he looks back, she’s even closer. Looking up at him expectantly.

“It was our first mission,” he admits. “I’ll work on it.”

“Next time, just talk to me,” she says. “Don’t run. Running just makes it worse. Believe me. I _do_ have experience with that.” Giving him a bit of a smile, she turns to go. Pauses, looks back over her shoulder. “And pretend, will you, that you’re the one who came to me? It’ll make Bodhi feel better.”

“I can do that,” Cassian promises.

And another long moment passes, one of those moments that Bodhi has been missing the past few days, in which they stare at each other across the space between them. They don’t say anything.

Maybe one day he will. For now, the smile in her eyes is enough.


End file.
